Also 5 metres of canvas.
I can’t help it, I feel in a clear frame of mind and I want as far as possible to make sure that I have enough paintings to maintain my position when the others will also be making a great effort for the year ’89. Seurat has enough, with 2 or 3 of his enormous canvases, to exhibit all by himself; Signac, who’s a good worker, also has enough, Gauguin too, and Guillaumin. So I’d like, myself, to have by that time — whether we were to exhibit it or not — the series of studies:
DECORATION.
That way we’ll be entirely original, because the others won’t be able to find us pretentious when that’s all we have. But be assured that I’ll try to give it a style.
Milliet was pleased today that I’d done the ploughed field; usually he doesn’t like what I do, but because the clods of earth were soft in colour, like a pair of clogs, it didn’t offend him — with the forget-me-not sky with its flecks of white cloud. If he posed better he would please me greatly, and he would have a smarter portrait than I’ll be able do now, although the subject itself is beautiful: his face with its pale, matt complexion, the red képi against an emerald background.
Ah, how I’d like you to see everything that I see these days! With so many beautiful things before me, I can’t help letting myself go. Especially because I feel that it’ll turn out a little better than the last consignment. But the last consignment was of studies that made me ready to be able to work with confidence these days that are windless.
Why is it that our good père Thomas isn’t willing to lend me something on my studies? He’d be wrong not to do it — and I hope that he will do it. I’m fearful of overburdening you, and yet I’d like to order a good two hundred francs worth of colours and canvases and brushes. It’s not for something else, it’s for that. The whole autumn may be good, and if I knock out a no. 30 canvas every two or three days, I’ll earn blenty of thousand-frenk pills. I have a concentrated strength still, which asks for nothing but to be used up in work. But I’ll inevitably begin to use up a quantity of colours, and that’s why we’d need Thomas.
If I continue working as I am these days, I’ll have my study full of really sound studies, the way it is at Guillaumin’s. Guillaumin must have some fine new things, of course, I don’t doubt it and I’d very much like to see them.
The present studies actually consist of a single flow of impasto. The brushstroke isn’t greatly divided, and the tones are often broken. And in the end, without intending to, I’m forced to lay the paint on thickly, à la Monticelli. Sometimes I really believe I’m continuing that man’s work, only I haven’t yet done figures of lovers, like him.
And it’s probable that I won’t do it, either, before some serious studies from life. But that’s not urgent; now I’m determined to work hard until I’ve surmounted it.
If I want this letter to go off, I must hurry.
Have you any news of Gauguin? I expect a letter from Bernard at any moment, which will follow the croquis, probably.
Gauguin must have another partnership in mind; I’ve felt that for weeks and yet more weeks.
He’s certainly free to do so.
Being alone won’t bother me for the time being, and later on we’ll find some company anyway, and perhaps more than we’ll want. Only I believe that we mustn’t say anything unpleasant to Gauguin if he were to change his mind, and take the thing entirely in good part. Because if he joins up with Laval, that’s only fair, since Laval’s his pupil and they’ve already kept house together.
If it came to it, well, they could both come here and we’d find a way of putting them up.
As for the furnishing, if I’d known in advance that Gauguin wasn’t coming, I’d still have wanted to have two beds in case I had to put someone up. So he’s definitely quite free. There will always be those who have a wish to see the south. What has Vignon been doing?? Ah well, if it all turns out for the best everyone will be sure to make great progress, and me too. If you can’t see the beautiful days here, you’ll still see the paintings of them. And I’m trying to make them better than the others. Handshake and
Ever yours,
Vincent.
[Sketch 689A]
689A. The public garden (‘The poet’s garden’)
691 | Arles, on or about Saturday, 29 September 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Thank you very much for your letter and for the 50-franc note it contained. It’s not a rosy prospect that the pains in your leg have come back — my God — it should have to be possible for you to live in the south as well, because I always think that what we need is sunshine and fine weather and blue air as the most dependable remedy. The weather’s still fine here, and if it was always like that it would be better than the painters’ paradise, it would be Japan altogether. How I think of you and of Gauguin and of Bernard, everywhere and at all times! It’s so beautiful, and I’d so much like to see everyone over here.
Included herewith little croquis of a square no. 30 canvas — the starry sky at last, actually painted at night, under a gas-lamp. The sky is green-blue, the water is royal blue, the fields are mauve. The town is blue and violet. The gaslight is yellow, and its reflections are red gold and go right down to green bronze. Against the green-blue field of the sky the Great Bear has a green and pink sparkle whose discreet paleness contrasts with the harsh gold of the gaslight.
Two small coloured figures of lovers in the foreground.
Likewise croquis of a square no. 30 canvas showing the house and its surroundings under a sulphur sun, under a pure cobalt sky. That’s a really difficult subject! But I want to conquer it for that very reason. Because it’s tremendous, these yellow houses in the sunlight and then the incomparable freshness of the blue.
All the ground’s yellow, too. I’ll send you another, better drawing of it than this croquis from memory; the house to the left is pink, with green shutters; the one that’s shaded by a tree, that’s the restaurant where I go to eat supper every day. My friend the postman lives at the bottom of the street on the left, between the two railway bridges.
The night café that I painted isn’t in the painting; it’s to the left of the restaurant.
Milliet finds it horrible, but I don’t need to tell you that when he says he can’t understand that someone can enjoy doing such an ordinary grocer’s shop, and such stiff, square houses with no charm at all, I reflect that Zola did a certain boulevard at the beginning of L’assommoir and Flaubert a corner of quai de la Villette in the summer heat, at the beginning of Bouvard et Pécuchet, that aren’t half bad. And it does me good to do what’s difficult. That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word — for religion — so I go outside at night to paint the stars, and I always dream a painting like that, with a group of lively figures of the pals.
Now I have a letter from Gauguin, who seems very sad and says he’ll definitely come once he’s made a sale, but still doesn’t commit himself as to whether, if he had his fare paid, he would simply agree to untangle himself over there. He says that the people where he’s staying are and have been faultless towards him, and that to leave them like that would be a bad deed. But that I turn a dagger in his heart if I were to believe that he wouldn’t come straightaway if he could. And furthermore, that if you could sell his canvases cheaply, he for one would be happy. I’ll send you his letter with the reply.
Certainly, his arrival would increase the importance of this venture of painting in the south by 100 per cent. And once here, I don’t see him leaving soon, because I believe he would put down roots.
And I always say to myself that with his collaboration, what you do in private would eventually be a more considerable thing than my work on my own; you would have more satisfaction without an increase in expenses.
Later, if some day you were perhaps established on your own account with Impressionist paintings, we’d only have to continue and to expand what exists at present. Lastly, Gauguin says that Laval has found someo
ne who’ll give him 150 francs a month, for a year at least, and that Laval will perhaps also come in February. And I having written to Bernard that I believed that he couldn’t live on less than 3.50 or 4 francs a day in the south, for board and lodging alone, he says that he believes that for 200 francs a month there would be board and lodging for all 3, which isn’t impossible, by the way, living and eating at the studio.
This Benedictine priest must have been very interesting. What, in his opinion, is the religion of the future likely to be? He’ll probably say, still the same as the past. Victor Hugo says, God is a lighthouse whose beam flashes on and off, and so now, of course, we’re passing through that darkness.
My only wish is that they could manage to prove something that would be calming to us, that would console us so that we’d cease to feel guilty or unhappy, and that just as we are we could proceed without getting lost in loneliness or nothingness, and without having at each step to fear or nervously calculate the harm which, without wishing to, we might cause others.
That odd fellow, Giotto, whose biography said that he was always unwell, and always full of ardour and ideas. Well, I’d like to be able to attain that self-confidence that makes a person happy, cheerful and lively at all times. That can happen much more easily in the country or a small town than in that Parisian furnace.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you liked the starry night and the ploughed fields — they’re calmer than some other canvases. If the work always went like that I’d have fewer worries about money, because people would come to it more easily if the technique continued to be more harmonious. But this bloody mistral is a real nuisance for doing brushstrokes that hold together and intertwine well, with feeling, like a piece of music played with emotion.
With this quiet weather, I let myself go and I have less need to struggle against impossibilities.
Tanguy’s consignment has arrived and I thank you for it very, very much, because this way I hope to be able to do something during the autumn for the next exhibition. What’s most urgent now is 5 or even 10 metres of canvas. I’ll write to you again and will send you Gauguin’s letter with the reply. Very interesting what you say about Maurin; at 40 francs his drawings are certainly not dear. More and more I believe that we must believe that true and fair dealing in paintings is to follow one’s taste, one’s education looking at the masters, one’s faith, in a word. It is no easier, I’m convinced, to make a good painting than to find a diamond or a pearl; it requires effort, and you stake your life as a dealer or an artist on it. So once you have good stones, it’s important not to lack faith in yourself either, but boldly keep things at a certain price.
While waiting, however . . . . But all the same, that thought gives me courage to work, while, however, I naturally suffer from the fact of having to spend money. But this thought of the pearl came to me right in the midst of my suffering, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it did you good, too, in your moments of discouragement. There are no more good paintings than there are diamonds.
And there’s absolutely nothing dishonest about dealing in good stones. One can believe in oneself when the thing one’s selling is good. Now if, though, people like paste, they’re at liberty to do so, and since they ask for it, well, one may keep it in stock.
But that isn’t enough to feel one is oneself — with good paintings, though, one can feel one is oneself and be firm, because it’s a pure error to think that there are as many as one wishes. Perhaps I express myself badly, but I’ve thought about it a lot lately, and calm has come to me about the Gauguin business.
All these Gauguins are good stones, and let’s boldly be the dealers in Gauguins.
Milliet greets you warmly, I have his portrait now, with the red képi against an emerald background, and in this background the emblem of his regiment, the crescent and a 5-pointed star.
[Sketch 691A]
691A. Crescent moon and star
Good handshake and more soon, and thank you very much, and I hope your pains won’t last. Have you seen a doctor again? Look after yourself, because physical pain is so annoying.
Ever yours,
Vincent
[Sketches 691B–C]
691B. The Yellow House (‘The street’)
691C. Starry night over the Rhône
695 | Arles, Wednesday, 3 October 1888 | To Paul Gauguin (F)
My dear Gauguin,
This morning, I received your excellent letter, which I’ve immediately sent to my brother; your conception of the Impressionist in general, of which your portrait is a symbol, is striking. I couldn’t be more intrigued to see it — but it will seem to me, I’m already sure, that this work is too important for me to wish to have it as an exchange.
But if you wish to keep it for us, my brother will buy it from you, as I immediately asked him, at the first opportunity if you wish, and let’s hope that will be very soon.
Because we’ll try once again to urge the possibility of your coming.
I must tell you that even while working I never cease to think about this enterprise of setting up a studio with yourself and me as permanent residents, but which we’d both wish to make into a shelter and a refuge for our pals at moments when they find themselves at an impasse in their struggle. When you left Paris, my brother and I spent more time there together that will always remain unforgettable to me. Our discussions took on a broader scope — with Guillaumin, with Pissarro, father and son, with Seurat, whom I didn’t know (I visited his studio just a few hours before my departure). In these discussions, it was often a matter of the thing that’s so dear to our hearts, both my brother’s and mine, the steps to be taken in order to preserve the financial existence of painters, and to preserve the means of production (colours, canvases), and to preserve directly to them their share in the price that their paintings at present fetch only when they have long ceased to be the property of the artists.
When you’re here we’ll go back over all those discussions.
In any event, when I left Paris very, very upset, quite ill and almost an alcoholic through overdoing it, while my strength was abandoning me — then I withdrew into myself, and without daring to hope yet.
At present, dimly on the horizon, here it comes to me nevertheless — hope — that intermittent hope that has sometimes consoled me in my lonely life.
Now I’d like to see you taking a very large share in this belief that we’ll be relatively successful in founding something lasting.
When we’ll talk about those strange days of discussions in the poor studios and the cafés of the Petit Boulevard, and you’ll see in full our idea, my brother’s and mine, which hasn’t in any way been carried out, in terms of forming an association.
Nevertheless, you’ll see that it is such that everything that we’ll do in future to remedy the terrible state of these past few years will either be just what we said, or something similar to it. So unshakeable a basis will we have given the thing. And you’ll admit, when you have the full explanation, that we’ve gone well beyond the plan we’ve already told you about. It’s no more than our duty as picture dealers to have gone further, because you perhaps know that I too spent years in the trade, and I don’t look down on a profession in which I’ve eaten my daily bread.
Suffice it to say that I don’t believe that even when apparently cutting yourself off from Paris you will cease to feel that you’re in fairly direct contact with Paris.
I have an extraordinary fever for work these days, at present I’m grappling with a landscape with blue sky above an immense green, purple, yellow vine with black and orange shoots.
Little figures of ladies with red sunshades, little figures of grape-pickers with their cart further liven it up.
Foreground of grey sand. Once again square no. 30 canvas for the decoration of the house.
I have a portrait of myself, all ash-coloured. The ashy colour that comes from mixing Veronese with orange lead, on a pale background of uniform Veronese, with a red-brown garment. But exaggerating
my personality also, I looked more for the character of a bonze, a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha. It cost me a good deal of trouble, but I’ll have to do it all over again if I want to express the thing. I’ll have to cure myself even further of the conventional numbness of our so-called civilized state, in order to have a better model for a better painting.
Something that gave me enormous pleasure; I received a letter from Boch yesterday (his sister is one of the Belgian Vingtistes), who writes that he’s settled in the Borinage to paint miners and coal-mines there. He’ll return, though, to what he has in mind in the south — to vary his impressions, and in that case will certainly come to Arles.
I find my artistic ideas extremely commonplace in comparison with yours.
I always have an animal’s coarse appetites. I forget everything for the external beauty of things, which I’m unable to render because I make it ugly in my painting, and coarse, whereas nature seems perfect to me.
Now, however, the energy of my bony carcass is such that it goes straight to the target; from that comes a perhaps sometimes original sincerity in what I make, if, that is, the subject lends itself to my rough and unskilful execution.
I believe that if from now on you began to think of yourself as the head of this studio, which we’ll attempt to make a refuge for several people, little by little, bit by bit, as our unremitting work provides us with the means to bring the thing to completion — I believe that then you’ll feel relatively consoled for your present misfortunes of penury and illness, considering that we’re probably giving our lives for a generation of painters that will survive for many years to come.
These parts of the world have already seen both the cult of Venus — essentially artistic in Greece — and the poets and artists of the Renaissance. Where these things have been able to flower, Impressionism can do so too.
About the room where you’ll stay, I’ve made a decoration especially for it, the garden of a poet (in the croquis Bernard has there’s a first idea for it, later simplified). The unremarkable public garden contains plants and bushes that make one dream of landscapes in which one may readily picture to oneself Botticelli, Giotto, Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio. In the decoration I’ve tried to tease out the essence of what constitutes the changeless character of the region.
Ever Yours Page 91